Brian Pagano is a software architect at Apigee, an outfit that does nothing but help companies build and operate APIs, interfaces that let one piece of software talk to another. In describing the APIs his company deals in, he wants to lend some perspective to another question, a question that may soon be answered by the federal judge overseeing the ongoing legal battle between Google and Oracle: Can you copyright an API?

If Judge William Alsup rules that APIs are subject to copyrights, he would overturn common wisdom in programming circles, potentially exposing many companies and developers who have built software platforms that openly mimic existing APIs. But that’s not all. Such a ruling could shake things up for many other companies across the programming world and beyond.